GM Agrees to Give UAW Members $5,000 Signing Bonus. Should Taxpayers Have Been Paid First?

The United Auto Workers and General Motors have come to a tentative agreement for a national labor contract covering the next four years. In addition to hourly raises for both veteran and second tier autoworkers, the contract calls for a $5,000 signing bonus. With 48,500 employees represented by the UAW, that means that GM will be paying out a little more than a quarter of a billion dollars in those bonuses.

While the UAW members, I'm sure, look at the bonus and raises as compensation for the concessions they've given to domestic automakers over the tumultuous past half decade, they do present a public relations problem for both the union and for General Motors. In the Daily Caller, Mickey Kaus asks the question, "How about paying back the $15 billion first?", regarding US taxpayers' "investment" in bailing out GM?